You are a system administrator for a company network running all Windows 7 works

Question

You are a system administrator for a company network running all Windows 7 workstations. You rely on User Account Control to minimize the possibility of system infiltration by unauthorized software. Many of the department employees spend most of their time performing administrative tasks for the network and therefore require administative access to their systems. The IS department for the company headquarters also users an "open office" design, which means that employees are constantly wandering around to each others' work areas -- often leaving their workstations logged on.

You are concerned about the danger of unattended workstations being used to gain administrative access to the systems. What changes can you make to the UAC configuration to minimize this possibility? Explain how these change would enhance the security of the systems.

Explanation / Answer

The point of User Account Control (UAC) is to notify you before changes are made to your computer that require administrator-level permission. The default UAC setting notifies you when programs try to make changes to your computer, but you can change how often UAC notifies you.

In this case where many department employees spend most of their time performing administrative taks for the network and require administrative access but need to make sure that with the open office design that co-workers passing by cannot gain access to unattended workstations we must change the default setting for the UAC to 'Always Notify'.

Some of the benefits of this setting are:

You'll be notified before programs make changes to your computer or to Windows settings that require administrator permissions.

When you're notified, your desktop will be dimmed, and you must either approve or deny the request in the UAC dialog box before you can do anything else on your computer. The dimming of your desktop is referred to as the secure desktop because other programs can't run while it's dimmed.

This is also the most secure setting available on the UAC. When you're notified, one should carefully read the contents of each dialog box before allowing changes to be made to the computer.

Hope this helps, let me know if you have any more questions about the UAC or need any clarification.

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